Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Preschool cookbooks

Mollie Katzen wrote the Moosewood cookbooks. We thought this would be a fun set of healthy recipes for foods R could help cook for us all to enjoy at dinner.

Yesterday we tried making pink fruit dip with frozen raspberries, cream cheese, and yogurt. It was a good dip, but the yogurt flavor was a little overpowering. She ate some of it and I think we could modify it to be more to our tastes.

Tonight we were counting the minutes until Papa would come home and R found the salad bar recipe in the book. We found some good salad toppings in the kitchen (carrot, mushroom, olives, cheese, croutons) and spent the rest of our time prepping them. I cut everything and she put it into small cups. Both kids were excited about making things a little fancier and I think she ate more veggies tonight because they were "hers." Also, it was a good reminder that spending a little time doing something like cutting up olives for salad can be an afternoon saver.

Cooking It in a Cup!We picked out this book because we thought R would enjoy the novelty of the cups. Also, it has a wide variety of basic foods that will be good for snacks and lunch.

We plan to make some baked rice cups later this week and the roasted broccoli I think, but this morning both kids suddenly wanted scrambled eggs so we tried the "easy eggs."

It doesn't get much easier - scramble an egg with a fork, pour into one of the cups, microwave for 30 seconds, let cool for 2 minutes. The kids really enjoyed watching the eggs grow and almost overflow in the microwave. R and I thought they were a little plain (we'll add cheese next time), but J ate all of his egg and then stole the majority of mine. He's been eating up a storm since his 2nd birthday, so this will be a great easy snack for him.

Both of these cookbooks were recommended for kids age 4 - 8. There are a lot of cookbooks for older kids who have more skill around the stove, but I was glad to find these with the abilities of a 5 year old in mind.